This project has been percolating for a while. I know that its not Star Wars, but I figured that Flash Gordon was a major inspiration to George Lucas when he was developing the original script. Many people have made some great Flash Gordon customs (Johsua Izzo, grinman, retroprops and a few other customizers to be sure), so I'm simply adding my own take to a long line of great interpretations.

The base figure is a Bullseye with a heavily reworked Gambit head. I sculpted the hair and the the top part of the head gear. The shirt is fabric, leather, and plastic tubing (for the decorative circles).

The ray gun is a combination of a Jango Fett accessory and a Nick Fury pistol. The sword is one of those drink garnish decoartion thingies that's bee repainted...I bought a box of them from the dollar store, and I was dying to use one.

I was trying to combine the original comic version and also reflect some of the Buster Crabbe attitude as well...I also loved how Gambit's smirk echoed the Electric Tiki statue's sculpt so closely. He's pretty simple, but I'm happy with how he turned out.

MING THE MERCILESS

Ah, the cruel dictator of the planet Mongo, seeking to command the entire universe under his iron rule. For my Ming, I decided to base it more on Max Von Sydow's appearance in the cheesefest movie from 1980 than the more classic version portrayed by Robert Middleton in the serials.

The base figure is a movie Green Goblin. The head is a Plan B German soldier...I dremelled him bald and I also sculpted the beard from epoxy putty. The costume is layers of fabric and leather, and the large collar is styrene. The staff is a metal rod with the sword hilt from a Samurai Spawn figure.

While the 1980 movie is not considered to be a great work of art, I do like the idea of Max Von Sydow playing the cruel Ming, and so I decided to borrow elements of that design for my custom.

ROCKET SHIP

How's Flash supposed to get around? Why, his rocket ship of course! Thanks to a coworker's suggestion of large juice bottles, I finally had a starting point to develop this project.

The basic fuselage/body is made of two large format juice containers. I removed the bottoms and attached them end to end. The nose is a funnel. The fins are styrene. The secondary engine thingies running along the side are made from some miscellaneos plumbing parts. I primed it, sprayed it with metallic silver paint, and voila! A really big rocket ship.

A scale shot:

The window is blister card plastic. I built up the sides of the window with styrene so that the window would rest on a flush surface.

I really wanted this to feel like an old fashioned toy, and decided to build up the inside with a %@#! and various controls.

I used parts from a Weapon X Wolverine accessory, some Omega Red tentacles, and some printed decals for the guages and dials. I may expand the detailing in the back of the ship, especially if I make Dr. Zarkoz and Dale Arden.

The X-Wing is, for me, an iconic toy from my childhood. The version that I had when I was really young was from a yard sale or a flea market, and as such was missing the plastic canopy. But that really didn’t matter…I still loved it. I did manage to get a complete X-Wing when I was ten (thanks Brad), but it still sort of stands as a very significant toy in my childhood memories.

Which leads me to this project.

I found a place called Industrial Plastics that sells large sheets of styrene for the same price that I was paying for a tiny piece at the model shop...which of course drove me absolutely insane. As is the first order of business when a new avenue opens to me, I started to think how this discovery could be used for customizing purposes. Now, I've been kind of burnt out on figure customizing, so I thought it might be cool to branch out from my juice bottle rocket ship experiment and tackle something more...involved. My first thought was to make a Batmobile (which I still intend to do, by the way), but then I realized that Star Wars provided an equally compelling wellspring of inspiration. Thusly, I decided to make a "toy" X-Wing in the same vane as the original (but perhaps a bit more detailed and grittier).

I'd like to state that the finished product is very inaccurate to the source material, and that I, in many respects, cut corners with regard to recreating the models as they actually appeared in the film. I'm also mimicking the proportions of the original Kenner X-Wing toy, but scaled up to 1/12 scale. In the former case, I'm claiming "artistic license"...in the latter case I'm claiming homage to that beloved toy of my childhood. Do you buy it?

The basic structure is large pieces of styrene with some support struts used in back half. I basically worked out the size I wanted, drew the pattern on the styrene, cut the first shape, and traced it to create the opposite side. Lots of cutting and fitting followed, since I had no set plan for what I was doing.

I used ordinary Testor’s model cement, since its designed to fuse model kits which are made from styrene that has been molded...the thickness of the sheet is 1/16", which is a great size for both stability and for cutting purposes. I've worked with thicker pieces, and its just way too difficult and dangerous to use. The basic structure that you see above turned out a lot sturdier than I could have ever hoped for.

The engine nacelles are some PVC plumbers parts that I eyed at a hardware store...the plumbing aisle is a treasure trove for this sort of thing (I also picked up the parts I'm using for the laser cannons there too). I built support struts to attach the nacelles to the wings and the side of the fuselage. I'd like to mention that I wasted several nights trying to engineer a functional "s-foil" mechanism that would allow the wings to open and close. After a lot of frustration, I gave up and decided to just have the wings permanently "open."

The wings are hinged, but as I just wrote, are permanently set in the attack position. The placement of the wings and nacelles are a little too delicate for my liking, but have stood up pretty well to handling.

For the surface detail, I"etched" the panels into the styrene with an exacto knife, and sanded down the surface. These lines did get lost during the priming stage in some cases, but they provided at least some guidance for my final paint job.

"Etched" panels:

Artoo had to be removable (since it always annoyed me that he wasn’t in the original toy), and I may still do some interior detailing to the back section. When I was a kid, I used the battery compartment of the Kenner toy as a place for Luke to store his accessories, so I may try to make some sort of hatch along those lines later on.

Here's some further progress on the X-Wing...this kind of project is a helluva lot more time consuming than a custom figure!

Basic structure complete:

C-o-c-kpit details:

The seat is a professor X wheelchair, and the surrounding structure is a wierd X-Files figure accessory. I was sweating about doing the c-o-c-kpit, but I think is provides a decent looking base for further details.

Primed:

And a patchwork of panels:

Whether its too extreme a variance of color or not, I'm not sure, but I kind of like the way the varying shades look for the panels.

The finished product:

This was by far the most time-consuming and expensive project I’ve ever attempted. It took over two and a half weeks to complete, and I spent about $50 in supplies for this monstrosity. Its 27 ˝” long and 24 ˝” wide, and is actually surprisingly light considering its size. While the wings are a bit wobbly, they are relatively sturdy, and the main body/structure seems to be pretty solid.

Sorry for the crappy pictures, but the size of this thing is sort of beyond the proportions of my photo set-up.

The section on the top of the fuselage behind Artoo was decorated with odds and ends. The back panel remains unfinished, simply because I wanted this thing to be able to rest on the back and the engine nacelles.

The C0ckpit:

The targeting computer is an articulated arm from an Animated Avengers figure accessory and the doodad that was attached to the X3 Magneto figure. This section went together much more easily than I initially anticipated.

And here’s a couple of shots that fellow customizer Magnuz doctored for me…he did an awesome job. Thanks man!

Your work is truely amazing! You should seriously consider trying to create your own line of action figures, or at the very least try to get a licence to revisit one like the Flash Gordon line you've done.

I dont think you know how much i love it when you do star wars customs. I love this ship! And i love your pilot even more. Every detail is great, even down tothe navi screen in the cockpit.Is that your 6" concept R2 that you made a while back? I like the scale of him here.He's a big bulky rusty Trusty robot. Fantastic stuff.

Well...I made an X-Wing, so I HAD to make a TIE Fighter...one without the other just makes no sense. I got some suggestions and ideas for the c0ckpit section from some fellow customizers (and my lady as well)…the most feasible option being a Hamster Ball. Once that was locked down, I started constructing the supports and the wings. After the major sections were constructed, I did a dry fit of the pieces:

The window supports were very time consuming, and something of a logistical challenge. They’re basically strips of styrene attached to an octagonal centerpiece, but it took a while to get it to look right in my mind’s eye.

Next was the texture of the wings. I used strips of duct tape to mimic the texturing of the solar panels, and while the texture could be more pronounced, I figured this was the most affordable and practical solution:

Now the problem is that a TIE Fighter needs a pilot, so I made one:

The parts list for him is kind of irrelevant, since I basically assembled him from bits and pieces. There's some Hush Catwoman, SMC Daredevil, Deadpool, and a few other odds and ends in there as well. The helmet is an original sculpt in epoxy putty, with hosiery from a Mr. Freeze figure. Cloth and Fabric make up the flight suit and flak vest.

Like my stormtrooper, I used vinyl to make the sharper edges of the helmet details by layering panels. I decided to add silver trim to the edges of the panels to make them stand out a little more.

Here he is with his bud:

And now the TIE Fighter itself:

This ended up being even more time consuming than the X-Wing, and I'm not sure why. The wings took a very long time to assemble, since there were so many individual steps to get a clean look to the whole thing. Its about twenty inches tall.

There is much less detail on my version than the one in the movies, partially because I'm lazy, and partially because I kind of liked the simplified look without all of the "greeblies" sticking out every which way on the wings. Who knows...I may decide to devote more time to detailing, but I'm happy with how it looks for now...this thing was enough work as it is.

The c0ckpit was really annoying, since I had to fit a bunch of very imprecise pieces into a round structure...lots of trial and error to make the limited detailing fit.

I'm really happy with the proportions of the wings to the ball...the Hasbro/Kenner toy's wings always looked to small, and I wanted to make sure that my version seemed a bit more accurate in that regard.

Inspired in part by Hemble's modified POTF2 AT-ST (that's a lot of acronyms!), I decided that I wanted to construct a 'chicken walker' as my next large-scale Star Wars vehicle. I started with some hasty sketches done while on lunch break, and began basic construction using my favorite medium...styrene!

I started with the head and legs, and also constructed a 'box' to serve as the main body/support:

The green was a 'happy accident' as the color on the spray can looked more like a light grey/green/beige. The camoflage color ended up really working for me, so I stuck with it.

You may not notice, but I actually reduced the width and depth of the head from the initial construction...the shape of the back of the head was off in my crappy sketch and in the first build, so I took it apart and recut the pieces to look a little more (bot not much more) accurate to the actual design of the original model. The forward laser canons are mechanical pencils mounted on some cheap craft containers, and the side canon and concussion grenade launcher are from the fodder bucket.

Pilot

Obviously more AT-AT driver than AT-ST driver, I wanted to make him a little more interesting than a grumpy guy with a helmet and goggles. He's made from some Marvel Legends parts, leather and fabric, and epoxy putty and vinyl detailing for the helmet sculpt.

C0ckpit

Detailed with scratch built control panel, Star Wars accesory pack junk, and some grating courtesy of a plastic dollar store basket.

Reminds me of my child hood. My parents couldnt afford to get me a AT AT walker, so i built one out of cardboard boxes. Thats the first thing that popped in my head when i saw the construction.Of course it was nothing as elaborate or professional looking like this.I love the color, intentional or not. The fisrt color picture, i said nice choice.Then the detail pics where you can see the rust. Beautiful AT ST!

Always impressive!

Every time i look at this i get taken back to the early 80's . Makes me smile every time.